AI-powered tiebreak mechanisms: An application to chess

In this paper, we propose that AI systems serve as a judge in the event of a draw in games such as chess and in the event of a tie in tournaments. More specifically, we introduce a family of AI-based scoring mechanisms and the concept of "tiebreak strategyproofness" in $n$-person zero-sum games. A mechanism is called tiebreak strategyproof (TSP) if it is always in the best interest of every player to choose the "best" action according to a given AI system. As such, we introduce a practicable scoring mechanism in chess and show that it is TSP, i.e., it is never in the interest of a player to deliberately play a worse move to increase their advantage in case the game goes to the tiebreak. In other words, TSP mechanisms are immune to such strategic manipulations. We also show that the current "speed-chess" tiebreaks are not TSP or immune to manipulation with an example from 2018 world chess championship between Carlsen and Caruana.